Yeah, I`m marrying the most amazing, talented, loving, beautiful woman I`ve ever known on the 16th of this month. It`s been a challenge to get this far, not with her, but with the wedding. We`re paying for nearly the entire thing ourselves, organizing every last detail, and designing the decor as well. Small wedding, probably not more than 40 guests (if we end up with that many). I think the only day I looked forward to more in my life was the day my son was born.

I can say this: planning a wedding is STRESSFUL!!!! We have called in every favor we could get, begged and pleaded for discounts where we could get them, and we`re still flat broke. Still beats the hell out of being in debt before the marriage even begins. We didn`t do anything extravagant. It`s all elegantly simple, and because of that....naturally beautiful, just like my bride.

One irritant you folks may relate to on some level: We had found a great vegan bakery to make our cake. We looked at pricing and called to confirm what we wanted. It was going to be roughly $120...a great deal!! As soon as we showed up to pay our deposit they asked what we wanted the cake to say. TOld them hey, it`s a wedding cake, they dont usually say anything. The bakery owner says "it`s a wedding cake? Those start at $350". Exact same cake, not one single difference, three times the price. We promptly told them to shove it. Found a completely organic bakery who`s doing two cakes for us for under $100. They`re basically turning two of their standard cakes into wedding cakes with how theyre decorated and not charging us any extra. Score.

Vegan bakeries are not that common it appears. We had a pretty easy time finding an all organic bakery, which is a good alternative. I can tolerate enough eggs and dairy to make a cake for this particular day

Congratulations and good luck!!! I am getting married in just under 4 months! We opted for a much smaller wedding. Our family/friends/coworkers etc would have been almost 250 people and we just don't have the money for that. (We just bought a house 6 months ago)

I can tell you that if it`s measured on Vegan standards...it`s definitely NOT us LOL. We are totally off the wagon on this one, but at least we are offering *some* seafood as an alternative to red meat.

Best wedding ever. Every single guest said it was the best wedding they had ever been to in every possible way. We did it not only on a budget, but we planned the whole thing in just a few weeks (about 10 weeks of forward motion on it). My wife hand made every decoration, from table settings to ALL of the bouquets. I wrote the ceremony, from the greeting to the closing, and we wrote our own vows. We arrived to the reception on a boat (it was held at a venue on a lake) to the welcoming cheers of not only our guests, but about 200 restaurant patrons!!

All I can say further is that as stressful as wedding planning is, just plow through it and keep your expectations in sight. Know what is completely unreasonable and what is just lofty. Go for what makes YOU happy, not what you think your guests will be talking about afterward. Believe me, our friends will talk about our wedding for a long time and we operated on the most humble of means.